The Biography of Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson was born on December 1808. He was the 17th president of the United States. Johnson had been born into extreme poverty and had no formal education. Yet with determination and hard work, he had risen rapidly through politics, to state government and on to national office. He married Eliza McCardle, who was a school-teacher and was a big part of Johnson†s education, she helped him learn how to write and do arithmetic. He had three sons and two daughters. Andrew Johnson was a democratic and had served in the Senate from 1857- 1862. In the early months of the Civil War, Johnson was forced to flee his own state to avoid arrest. When federal troops conquered Nashville, he resigned his Senate seat in March 1862 to accept President Lincoln†s appointment as military governor of Tennessee. He served as vice president for a month in 1865, and as president for the balance of Lincoln†s terms. In January 1875, Johnson won back his former Senate seat after a struggle that forced the Tennessee legislature through 56 separate ballots. Johnson took his Senate deposition before the same body that only seven years earlier had failed by a single vote to remove him from the White House on March 5, 1875. During the 19 day Senate special session, he delivered a political turmoil in Louisiana and then returned to Tennessee, where he died four months later on July 31, 1875. He suffered from a stroke. Johnson was buried on a hilltop in Greenville, wrapped in a 37 star flag with a copy of the Constitution under his head.